Technoviking Phenomenon

by Matthias Fritsch

Matthias Fritsch researched the internet history of his video Kneecam No.1 aka Technoviking from it's production until it became popular with more than 20 million clicks on the internet and more than three thousand video responses on Youtube. The archive contains images, emails, blogs, forum discussions and a selection of some hundered videoresponses which are categorized to show the different attempts of the Web 2.0's recycling culture.

The results are published in form of installation of the archive and lectures were Fritsch also shows the most interesting video responses. The artist illustrates new ways of production and distribution within user generated networks. From his experiences on the Technoviking Phenomenon Fritsch developed his following Work Music from the Masses.

Visualising Invisible Networks as Collaborative Arts Practice

by Pip Shea

The practice of collaborative art-making is interested in the “creative rewards of collaborative activity” (Bishop 2006). This paper explores the rewards offered by collaborative art projects that incorporate the practice of visualizing communications networks and networked objects. It does so by considering the following hypothesis: having knowledge of the underlying structures and dynamics of networks unveils the actors within networks (Latour 2005); and, gaining an understanding of the distribution of agency among network actors helps facilitate consciousness around participation in networks (Lovink et al. 2009).

It is a response to Bruno Latour’s (2010) recent call to action that “we need to invent new ways to represent networks and new ways to make sense of them”; and, recognition of Roy Ascott’s (1989) assertion that “making the invisible visible” was “the great challenge of late twentieth century art” (Ascott 2003, 222). The paper examines cybernetics and the field of telematic art to gain a sense of how collaborative art and design practice can respond to rendering invisible communications networks visible.

Investigating the process of collaboration in the context of the e-MobiLArt project

by Dimitris Charitos and Veroniki Korakidou

The e-MobiLArt (European Mobile Lab for Interactive media Artists) project was tailored around the process of collaboratively creating interactive installations. The main objective of this project was to provide its participants with a multicultural, interdisciplinary context, so as to aid their collaboration in order to create interactive installations. Moreover it aimed at supporting the exhibition of the artworks they produced and the mobility of both artists and their works within Europe. The collaborative process took place during three workshops (in Athens, Rovaniemi and Vienna) as well as on-line. The artworks created were exhibited in two exhibitions that took place in the Biennale of Thessaloniki and in Katowice. Thirty three experienced artists, coming from the areas of visual, electronic, interactive art, architecture, performance, video and sonic art were selected to participate in e-MobiLArt. These participants formed 14 groups and worked together in order to develop their projects.

e-MobiLArt was an experimental project and as such, it cannot be evaluated by focusing on the artistic result alone, as presented in the two exhibitions, but mainly by investigating the processes that it entailed and the impact of these processes on all parties and individuals involved. This paper presents and discusses the results of an evaluation, which was conducted via questionnaires and interviews and attempted to document and analyse the collaborative process from the perspectives of all participants.

Collaboration occurred at various levels between the groups of participants (artists’ groups, organizers, curatorial advisors, etc.) as well as within each group. The outcome of this research reflects on certain important aspects of collaboration, focusing on specific group structures, roles, hierarchy, group formation and organization methodologies for communication and mediation as well as investigating how creative ideas and collaborative strategies can emerge within a group formation. The study showed that interaction amongst participants was determined by a series of: objective factors (technology utilized, constraints of the fixed timetable of the project, technical and financial constraints of the production, artists’ background and skills) as well as subjective factors (interpersonal relations, personality of individuals involved and behavior within groups, degree of involvement of members of each group).

《Super Will＞Super Share》

by Yueh Hsiu Giffen Cheng

The concept of 《Super Will＞Super Share》is based on an idea of the ancient Chinese folk ritual called Villain Hitting, with a purpose of connecting both elements, the conflict and the opposing, the virtuality and the entity, the digital technology and the traditional cultural phenomenon. The hi-tech age has brought us a digital space where full of imagination and over the rule from the nature; it has enhanced artist’s creativity, especially for artist who uses computer as creative medium or platform. As for Villain Hitting, it is a kind of old ritual or behavior of the mankind since ancient time, and still existing and continuing at the present days in the modern society. Thus, the hi–tech and the tradition have formed a contradictive social phenomenon.

《Super Will＞Super Share》 does not focus on the result from the traditional prediction, but the phenomenon of the combination of folk couture and digital culture, particularly how people’s behavior have changed throughout the hi-tech era. Hence, when people visit《Super Will＞Super Share》, they are experiencing a combinational culture between traditional and digital media, a contribution for collaborative creation. 《Super Will＞Super Share》 presents a phenomenon of recombination and decentralization from Post- Deconstruction.

On September 15, 2008, when the Lehman Brothers Holdings declared bankruptcy, the whole global stock market was affected by it and went down in the twinkling of an eye. Predictions from stock experts were malfunctioned, precise formulas for stock analysis had failed to operate. Thus, people started approaching a traditional way to comfort their souls, in an attempt to find a faith from the traditional folk culture which has disappeared in the hi-tech era. The idea of《Super Will＞Super Share》 is to convert the ritual of Villain hitting into a game-based artistic project, and transform the traditional culture into a digital technology platform. It shows the value of folk culture in the hi-tech age, and the social status between its close but estranged relationship.

《Super Will＞Super Share》 is a collaborative creation project based on the ritual of Villain hitting, using Taiwan’s stock market index as its data, allowing investors to imitate the ritual of Villain hitting, in order to strengthen people‘s collective wills, and to make their favor shares increase. Therefore, the stock market index in the《Super Will＞Super Share》presented a virtual data from its participants’ collective contributions. With more participants doing Villain hitting on the same share, the higher index the share will be. Consequently, when people are participating in the《Super Will＞Super Share》 project, they are also experiencing the collaborative creation at the same time. Hence, there is a metaphor to draw support from the combination of tradition digital hi-tech in a progressive tense of society.